Maharashtra has 1.56 crore JDY bank accounts as on November 9.

To easily operate these accounts, the National Payments Council of India-sponsored RuPay cards were to be issued.

The demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 bank notes has again turned the lens on financial inclusion and bank access for Indians. With the government banning 86 per cent of notes (by value) from circulation, parts of the economy which wholly transact in cash have either frozen or slown down. At this point, it is pertinent to look at the numbers of Jan Dhan Yojana (JDY) bank accounts.

Maharashtra has 1.56 crore JDY bank accounts as on November 9. Of these, 78 lakh are urban accounts and 78.5 lakh are rural accounts, according to numbers available on the JDY website. The top states, which account for the most Jan Dhan accounts, are naturally the most populous states in the country — Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The former has a total of 3.76 crore Jan Dhan accounts and the latter 2.61 crore.

To easily operate these accounts, the National Payments Council of India-sponsored RuPay cards were to be issued. But this hasn’t been achieved in all accounts. Overall, only 76.195 per cent Jan Dhan accounts are linked with a RuPay debit card.

Maharashtra has a slightly better success rate of 79.25 per cent. Chandigarh is the only state/union territory to have 90 per cent or more of Jan Dhan accounts linked to RuPay cards. Concomitantly, it also has the lowest ratio of zero balance Jan Dhan accounts at 12.7 per cent.

Chandigarh is followed by Karnataka and Punjab with the maximum RuPay card linkages of around 89 per cent each.

At the other end of the scale, Meghalaya has only 53 per cent Jan DHan accounts linked with RuPay and Mizoram 24.6 per cent.

One indication that these accounts are being used to some extent is that the percentage of zero balance accounts have come down. Jammu and Kashmir has the maximum zero balance account proportion of 36.67 per cent followed by Chhattisgarh at 33.44 per cent. Apart from Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh has a low zero balance proportion of 12.9 per cent and Tripura 13 per cent.

Have a comment or suggestion for CityBiz? Write to mumbai.newsline@expressindia.com with subject line: CityBiz